BELGIUM: Former European Commission President Jacques Delors says new social push can revive European Union

Former European Commission President Jacques Delors says it may be the right time for a new social push in Europe, suggesting a 'social protocol' enshrining the EU's common social objectives to go alongside a treaty reforming the 27-nation bloc's creaking institutions. A new push for a more socially just Europe could reconcile disenchanted citizens with the European Union and give it a new lease on life, former European Commission President Jacques Delors said on Wednesday (February 28). The French elder statesman, who headed the EU executive in its most dynamic years of 1985-94, told a Party of European Socialists meeting he was encouraged by signs that governments were becoming concerned about a growing wealth gap. He suggested drafting a new "social protocol" enshrining the EU's common social objectives to go alongside a treaty reforming the 27-nation bloc's creaking institutions. "We need a reasonable relaunch of social policy," Delors said. "We achieved things on a social level, and I think it is the right moment to do even more -- while also trying to get out of the dilemma caused by the Constitutional Treaty. With that report, and because some ears are opening, we could write a reasonable protocol, with words that count, not meaningless one, a protocol that would give European citizen a better, more balanced, image of Europe'', Delors added, making allusion to the fact that EU finance ministers were beginning to discuss a fairer sharing of the fruits of economic growth after years of demanding only wage cost-cutting and greater flexibility from workers. A constitutional treaty for Europe has been in limbo since French and Dutch voters rejected it in referendums in 2005. The EU's German presidency has been tasked with proposing a roadmap to revive reforms of decision-making in the enlarged bloc. Delors, 81, said a social protocol could give citizens a more balanced picture of the EU that was not just about economic liberalisation. He presented a booklet co-authored with former Danish Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen setting out proposals for "The New Social Europe". "The rebalancing of the economic and monetary union, with a Pact for the coordination of economic policies requesting from the Commission to report every six months on how economies are converging or not and the resulting loss of growth. This Pact for economic and monetary growth would supplement the Pact for monetary stability," he suggested. "Harmonising the corporate tax base within the euro zone, harmonising the tax brackets and eventually the tax rates because we find the main differences in the tax brackets. Thirdly, a minimum wage with a level proportionate to each state's national wealth imposed by European law, proportionate to each state's national wealth," Delors continued. Among other proposals he cited tripling funds for cross-border scholarships and student exchanges in the EU or giving school leavers who enter higher education later in life a two-year education cheque. For Delors, European leaders should consider the reform of EU institutions as a priority. "Europe would fall apart. I will not be alive then, but in twenty years, even Britain would say this is not good, we lost, our financial markets lost, our services' exports lost, our influence disappeared, decreased," he said.

ITN Source | March 2, 2007

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